Sunday, November 06, 2011

Elsewhere

Arjo Klamer has a blog, mainly in dutch. In one post in English, he argues that the award of the Nobel to Sargent and Sims symbolizes the failure of economics.

The U.S. Solidarity Economy Network (SEN) looks like an interesting site to explore. They attempt "to connect a diverse array of individuals, organizations, businesses and projects in the shared work of building and strengthening regional, national and international movements for a solidarity economy."

A group anti-Mankiw blog has been created to respond to the bushwa Mankiw posts on his blog. (Hat tip to Daniel MacDonald, who has quite a bit to say about walking out on Mankiw's class and the incoherence of his textbook.)

Corey Robin has a blog. His book, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, argues that what unites conservatives is reacting against attempts of oppressed groups (slaves vs. masters, workers vs. capitalists, women vs. men) to assert agency. The reaction is important - conservatives are often modernizers and derisive of the abilities of the ruling classes that they are attempting to defend. His book is analytical, not mocking, and not arguing for what is to be done.

5 comments:

I was not able to get into Klamer's blog, nor do I know the alleged basis for awarding Sargent and Sims the "Nobel" for economics.

But when you look at who has been awarded the Economics Nobel, you have to ask yourself what precisely the award is meant to reward, the stated purpose of economics or the unstated purpose of political economics? Myrdal and Hayek on the same day? Really? Kahneman, a cognitive science who spawned behavioral economics, something that will never be mainstream orthodoxy? The Nobel awards those who advance, willingly or unwittingly, the politics of economics, i.e., neoliberalism.

Hayek's real contribution was his famous book and his thinking on negative liberty.

Kahneman didn't really contribute anything that others had not observed in the past (e.g., Walter Lippmann, the proto-neoliberal, took potshots at rationality in his Public Opinion), he just confirmed those observations empirically.

The creators of neoliberalism, including those from both the Chicago and Austrian schools, were well aware that human beings do not act to maximize utility. They never meant their economics to describe reality. Their economics are meant to shape reality, "an engine, not a camera."

Yes! I think this also has the consequence that conservatism at any given time is highly situational. While the basic program of the left has not changed much since the French Revolution, conservatives from one generation to the next support completely different sets of policies.-Will